I hope you took time to check out the market yourself before asking for acceptance. I've never sold at a private market, but expect they can make any sort of deal, limitations, or restrictions they like, and even give you the boot for whatever as well.

I did once speak to an antique mall about selling some reproduction items. They insisted that they wanted to limit their inventory(as much as possible) to antique items, even if they did allow some vendors a small percentage of reproduction materials in the stalls.

Perhaps the guy has been burned before, or has seen some cutthroat activity in his place and he seems particularly careful about maintaining his place in a certain way, which might be great if you can get "in" there, he would be able to protect your trade.

Perhaps you just got off on the wrong track and need a more personal approach after evaluating what goes on at his market first hand. Meet the other vendors, question some regular customers, check HIM out a little too by asking around, maybe somenody who USED to sell there would give you a good rundown.

Good luck,
Jay

I think I can explain a lot of the third degree.

He asked legitimate questions. A poor attitude wasn't necessary. You might have caught him on a bad day. I'm afraid I'm not in the best mood when I've been in the garden on a 90° day. Or when the weeds are taller than the beet greens. Or the striped cucumber beetles arrived three days before I noticed them and have created a disaster. If I'm tired, hot, sweaty and dirty it sometimes reflects in my voice. You might have caught him on a bad day. I hope that's all it was. A good market master looks out for the market and its vendors. Farmers markets are a large part of my income so for me this is serious business. I need the market master to be paying close attention to who comes and goes.

Vendors who come into a market to sell their extras from a backyard garden and then disappear after a few weeks can be a problem. When vendors drop out of our market some of their customers question the rest of us as though we owe them an explanation. We might not know why she's not here this week, and no, we can't call her later to ask her to save something for next week.

By asking what you grow he was looking for things that the market needs and already has too much of. He wants to know whether you have a variety of things to bring with you, or are you growing only one thing? If someone's growing only corn or strawberries, for example, they're going to be at the market a relatively short amount of time instead of the full season. If there are already two corn or strawberry growers there it's probably best to not bring in another grower to a small market.

He might have been concerned about competition for the other plant grower due to concern over losing both of you. If two people are splitting the sales in this low traffic market and not making enough profit at the end of the day, who's going to stay? The market needs to be worth the time, work, gas, stall fee, membership fee and other expenses for farmers to stay involved.

Asking if you'd been to the market was a good question. He wanted to know if you'd seen what you were asking to join. Asking if you'd checked it out was one question versus asking if you knew who was selling there, what's already being sold, what the market needs, the market's location, the size of the market and the day and time it's open.

I'd go next week to see what's going on. Introduce yourself when it's not busy and talk with the other vendors. It's worth the trip and time.

Maybe it's just something simple like it's his mother-in-law who sells the plants! I was thinking about this yesterday. I sell at a cutthroat public market where we face heavy competition from hucksters bringing in produce from out-of state, even garlic from china, one guy was giving away tomatoes last week from his home garden, you should have seen people running......

In my dreams, I can imagine a market where I have an exclusive franchise for zucchini, with no competition.

What a life!